


the unmarked treasure map

by reafterthought



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, ffn challenge: mega prompts challenge, ffn challenge: short oneshot competition, pre-KH3, word count: 1001-1500 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 13:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14166300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reafterthought/pseuds/reafterthought
Summary: Aqua is the only one who can navigate Castle Oblivion, but one doesn't need to be able to navigate to find things.





	the unmarked treasure map

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the
> 
> Short Oneshot Competition  
> Mega Prompts Challenge, writing prompt #11 - write a oneshot over 1000 words

Someone was sleeping, somewhere.

Sora was sure of that, but there was little else he could make out in that foggy, inexact place. There was space, and a ground it stood upon. But he could not gain an understanding of that floor at all. Whether it was made from tiles or wood stone or dirt or ice was beyond him: no colour, no distinguishable texture – it was almost as though he wasn't standing at all but floating.

He was proven right when he took a forward step. His foot hovered, and then when he pushed a little, it sunk through.

He was a ghost: intangible in this world… or else the world was the intangible thing. Either way, they were on different levels: him and the world. He could touch nothing. He could barely make the walls, dividing one room and the next. It didn't really matter, though, when he could simply drift through said walls like they were curtains of water instead.

So he drifted, looking for a hint of something tangible in this place. If it was a dream, he'd wake up eventually. If it was a world overrun by Heartless, he'd eventually find them and the Keyhole. If it was something subconscious, he'd stumble upon the answer or reason soon enough… hopefully.

And maybe it was a mix of all of those, because he did find something finally. A sleeping boy atop a throne that seemed to swallow him. A somehow familiar boy – and it took him a moment to work out why.

He looked like Roxas: like the Nobody who'd tried to kill him and Riku and who Riku had defeated. They shared the same face – all of them – but the hair was light and neatly cropped: tame. He reached out and, to his surprise, the strands felt smooth and soft. He could feel them. This boy, Roxas or not, was every bit as tangible as he in this otherwise intangible world. And yet he sat slumped on that throne chair, so he was as tangible as the world as well.

Well, if he could touch him, perhaps he could talk with him as well. 'Hello?' he tried.

The boy on the throne didn't react at all. He merely breathed, soft and steady.

'I'm Sora. What's your name?'

His hair waved slightly, as though there was a draft.

'How'd you get here? And where is here, anyway?'

His chest rose and fell, soft and steady.

'Are you okay?'

Nothing changed at all.

He reached out and touched the other boy. Soft hair. Soft cheeks. Firm shoulder… and what was that on his shoulder? It was infused with magic, whatever it was. It wasn't his though, or any magic he was familiar with.

He called his Keyblade. The room trembled while it formed. Was it afraid? Or did he seem like the intruder drawing his sword. But his intentions were pure: he only wished to read the magic of that badge and, eventually, the room returned to its former state.

The Keyblade appeared in his hand and the other boy hadn't moved at all.

He tapped it to the badge and let it read. Armour, came the answer. It was armour. Armour against the Heartless. Armour against the darkness.

He lowered the Keyblade. That armour could have saved the worlds swallowed in darkness if it were more widespread. But so could the keyblades and there are too few to stand up to Xehanort, and too few wielders…

His keyblade hummed in his hands, hovering above the other's open palm. It was calling something. Calling another keyblade, he realised, as light burst from the other's palm and began to shape. It looked like his own keyblade, at first, but then it changed.

It was still a familiar keyblade. He'd wielded it, sometimes. And Roxas had wielded it too, sometimes… and Xion too, it seemed.

The rush from Roxas' memories flooded him for a moment, and then he breathed.

Through it all, the other boy breathed soft and gentle and undisturbed.

He still didn't know if this was a dream or something else, but this boy held some sort of answer, he was sure. The keyblade, the potency of those memories, he being the only intangible thing in this world… it was too much to be coincidence.

The answer might have been right in front of him, but he couldn't see it.

He lifted his keyblade. It unlocked doors, but there was no door here to unlock. Except, maybe…

The two keyblades brushed together and told only the name: Wayward Wind.

He lifted it higher. Perhaps there was another door. Like Riku, how Riku had dived into his heart.

The tip touched the other's chest, and he heard a whisper, again. 'So warm…'

'Warm?' he repeated.

'Your heart. It's… so warm.'

He smiled, despite his confusion. 'That's a really nice thing to say.'

'I remember. This is your heart.'

So there was a reason he looked so much like Roxas, after all. 'Can I ask –'

'I'll sleep here a little longer...' And then the keyblade tip slid away, like oil on a water surface. 'Until the light comes.'

Sora mulled that over, as he drifted. The light. The sleeping boy. Was this King Mickey's friend? Waiting for the keyblade master lost in darkness? If that was the case, then hopefully Riku would find her soon: the master – Aqua. And this boy… the boy whose heart had been fractured by Xenoheart…

'Ventus,' he said aloud. 'That's your name. Ventus.'

Something warmed in his heart, and he heard those words again: 'Your heart. It's… so warm.'

'I remember,' Sora echoed. And he did; a voice from when he was younger, on the Destiny Islands with Riku… They had said the same thing then, that they were drawn to his warm heart, and that they'd rest there for a while…

And hadn't Riku, too, said someone had been protecting his heart while he'd slumbered.

'Was that you?' he asked aloud. 'Thank you.'

Ventus breathed, chest rising and falling slowly, hair waving gently in the unseen draft.

Nothing changed. Was there something else, then, that he'd missed? Sora looked at his keyblade, than the other's, then the room itself. It all looked the same, though he felt he understood a little more.

Perhaps there was something somewhere else, then. Or perhaps the room held a secret, too. But raising the keyblade did nothing. So he said farewell to the sleeping Ventus and drifted through other rooms.

They were familiar, some of them. Castle Oblivion, he realised, as he passed them through. Some had Heartless wandering, and his keyblade just passed through like a dream. Others were empty.

Them he came to the bottom and found Xehanort, and understood. Xehanort who saw him easily: who looked up and smiled at the floating keyblade wielder. Xehanort who lifted his arm and the Heartless came to answer his building. Xehanort who frowned when it became apparent the Heartless could no more touch Sora than Sora could touch them.

But it was Xehanort. He had much greater magic at his disposal. Sora fled back through Castle Oblivion, and the Heartless phased through walls and followed him. He fled aimlessly a moment, before remembering Ventus asleep and kept to the lowest level. Perhaps Xehanort was doing something else at the castle. Or perhaps he was looking for the sleeping Ventus. Either way, Sora could not put him in the other's path, and it didn't matter how many Heartless they became on the lower level if they couldn't touch him and he couldn't touch them.

Though he wasn't sure if he could find his way back anyway. Every room looked the same, aside from the Heartless in them.

He flew till the walls and the Heartless became a blur of black and white. Flew until he could hear a voice calling him – Xehanort! No, not Xehanort…

He blinked. King Mickey's worried face swam into view, and Sora breathed a sigh of relief. 'Thank goodness.'

King Mickey echoed the words. 'You were fast asleep.'

'I'm sorry,' he apologised. That concern was two-fold now, with Ventus as well as Sora's recent adverse slumber. 'I was dreaming… of Castle Oblivion. And Ventus, I think, sleeping there.'

'Castle Oblivion,' King Mickey repeated. He, too, must have been thinking about Ventus sleeping there. 'That place has kept him safe for ten years, now, but it is also a den of monsters with the Organisation always lurking there.' He paused. 'You saw Ventus?'

Sora nodded. 'He said my heart is warm. Maybe he was lonely, with there only being Heartless around…'

'Maybe…' King Mickey echoed. 'In that case, I'm glad you got to meet him. But I do hope Aqua comes back soon. I'm sure he'll wake up, once Aqua brings Terra back.'

'Terra?' Sora asked. He wasn't sure if that name had been mentioned before. He didn't recognise it, at least.

'Ventus, Aqua and Terra.' King Mickey closed his eyes. 'That's a long story, from when Castle Oblivion was still the Land of Departure…'


End file.
